


just like marie antoinette

by Nokomis



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Resurrection, Reunions, because a stupid ending deserves a stupid solution tbh, magic cake, post-season 4 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 03:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18541273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: Quentin is forcibly yeeted out of the afterlife. (Post-413 fix-it)





	just like marie antoinette

**Author's Note:**

> This what I came up with when I thought, "What would The Magicians have to do to redeem themselves from the 4x13 finale?" Huge thanks to Saramir for both encouraging me to actually write this and looking it over. ♥

Quentin stepped through the doorway, fully prepared for the peace that had eluded him in life.

Instead, it felt like he’d just been flung into a tilt-a-whirl, dizzily spinning through space itself. It… It wasn’t quite what Penny had prepared him for. Quentin found himself screaming, and he landed with a thud sprawled on the carpeted floor, eyes squeezed shut, as the last of the scream escaped his lips.

He opened his eyes slowly, suddenly fearful that he hadn’t been destined for a peaceful Underworld but one of punishment instead, one of pain and anguish and… fluorescent lights buzzing in a tiled ceiling, apparently. 

He lay for a moment, staring at the utterly mundane ceiling, breathing heavily. It seemed faintly ridiculous that he couldn’t catch his breath -- he didn’t even have a body, it’d been magically vaporized -- but that, apparently, was his life. After-life. Death. Whatever.

“Up, up!” a voice called from somewhere above him, and Quentin slowly pushed himself up to see a vaguely familiar office. A totally familiar office, actually, only this time there weren’t balloons and cake.

He was in the Old Gods’ Realm. 

“What the fuck?” he said, more to himself than anything, but he got an answer anyway.

“Agreed! This is totally irregular.” 

Quentin looked to his right to see the same dude who’d greeted him and Josh when they’d arrived here. “I thought I was going to the Underworld.”

“You died? That quick? Dude,” said the dude. 

Quentin scowled. “I saved the world.”

The dude rolled his eyes. “The world needs saving a lot less than you hero-types believe. It’s pretty damn self-regulating, really. What you were trying to save was your way of life.”

Quentin hadn’t realized that being dead meant getting lectured constantly on his character and motivations. “I was supposed to be at peace.”

“Well, you fucked it up somehow,” the dude said, peering at him curiously. “I’m not sure this has ever happened before, so congrats on having a totally unique fuck-up! Those are more rare than you’d think.”

“Thanks,” Quentin said. He climbed unsteadily to his feet -- the portal that had lead him here had left his limbs shaky. He stood there swaying for a second, figuring out how to plant his feet to steady himself. “But _how_ did I manage to fuck up dying?”

It was supposed to be the easiest thing in the world to do, after all. Living was the hard thing. Buffy had been right about that.

“That is a good gods-damned question,” the dude said. He peered at Quentin intently, lifting his arm, sniffing behind his ear, plucking out a strand of hair and inspecting it closely. Quentin just stood there and let him, because what else did he have to do? 

Think about his own memorial, and how he’d felt watching everyone’s faces? He had a twisting, awful feeling in his stomach. He knew he’d done the wrong thing. He’d made the wrong call, and now everyone was suffering.

Eliot’s face as he threw that peach flashed in his mind, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

“Ah-ha!” the dude said, from where he was crouched in front of Quentin listening to his stomach. “Do that again!”

“Do what?” Quentin said. 

The dude shook his head, and pressed his ear totally against Quentin’s abdomen. “There’s your problem, right there.”

“I don’t follow,” Quentin said. Anxious stomachaches had been a problem in his life, yeah, but he didn’t see how they would bar him from the afterlife.

“When was your last BM?” The dude prodded Quentin’s stomach. 

Quentin wondered if he could die again, and avoid having ever been asked that question. “None of your damn business.”

“Actually, it is,” the dude said, climbing to his feet and moving to the desk. “Did you eat your congratulatory cake?”

“Yeah, it was delicious.” The sprinkles had tasted like rainbows arcing across his soul. It had been the best thing Quentin had ever eaten, and the last.

“Figures. You look like the pent-up type.” 

Quentin didn’t get it. “What?”

“You went and died with it still in your system,” the dude said, shaking his head. “That’s a big no-no, my friend. What was the manner of your death? Wait, don’t, I don’t need all the woe-is-me bullshit you mortals place on your own demise. I’ll just pull the paperwork.”

He dug into his desk, pulled out an old Sidekick phone that looked remarkably like the one Quentin himself had had in seventh grade, and flipped open the keyboard. He typed for a minute, then finally said, “Boy howdy, that was a doozy. You don’t do anything by halves, do you, kid?”

“Not really,” Quentin said. “Is that why…”

“Oh yeah, Hades would not allow entry for someone with part of the Old Gods’ realm in their body -- getting vaporized means that it went to all your cells, which is a pretty damn cool loophole you found -- so here you are.”

“So this is my afterlife?” Quentin looked around at the office, disappointed. He’d imagined less motivational posters in the afterlife, somehow. Maybe a nice meadow, or a reading nook. Not uncomfortable chairs and bland walls. 

“Oh no, that shit wouldn’t fly with management,” the dude said. “A mortal here? Even a mortal with the fabric of the universe intertwined with his genetic makeup? I would get in so much trouble, my dude. I would get fucking demoted.” He shuddered.

Quentin blinked rapidly, trying to process what the dude had just said. “I’m sorry, the fabric of the universe?”

“Crap,” said the dude. “Pretend you didn’t hear that, okay? Look. I think we can fix this, just. You gotta be real cool about it. Don’t make it a big deal. Definitely don’t draw the attention of the management.” He gestured towards a plain door with a small nameplate that simply read, “Old Gods.”

Quentin had never managed to be cool about anything in his entire life, but he nodded his agreement anyway. 

“So we’ll just, you know, pretend this never happened now,” the dude said. “Remember, mum’s the word!”

He reached behind the desk and pulled out a small box with a red button on it, and before Quentin could question, well, _anything_ , he’d grabbed Quentin’s hand and pushed the button with it.

The floor seemed to open up beneath him, and for the fourth time, Quentin found himself hurtling through time and space without the benefit of a TARDIS. He landed on his face this time, his mouth filled with dirt.

Quentin spat it out, rolling over and staring up at the sky. It was a dark, angry grey, and as he lay there a few heavy raindrops hit his face. He took in a deep breath, and it was astonishing how magical Earth’s air could feel. It wasn’t just the ambient levels, but something else, bright and joyful, even as the wind whistled through the trees. He thought of Fillory’s opium-laced air and was grateful that he’d landed on Earth instead; he didn’t think his heart could stand more of this effervescent feeling.

He sat up, and it struck him that the feeling was _joy_. For the first time in a long time, just being alive was bringing him untold joy. There was a lightness to his limbs as he stood, nothing at all like the coltish clumsiness of his crash-landing in the Old Gods’ Realm.

He was outside the Physical Kids’ Cottage, standing where the night before -- he hoped it’d been the night before, anyhow -- he and Penny had watched his memorial. The air still held the smoky scent of the fire, and Quentin walked to the ashes. Most of the things had turned to ash, but he found his crown, scorched but intact, as well as a blackened peach pit.

He brushed the crown off on his shirt, only accomplishing ruining his shirt with sooty black smears, and pocketed the peach pit. It felt important, somehow, to salvage Eliot’s token of love from the fire, no matter how worthless it might look on the outside.

A few steps away from the fire pit, one of his playing cards lay on the ground. He picked it up and turned it over. The king of hearts. He tucked it into the same pocket as the peach pit, and took a deep breath.

He went inside the cottage without hesitation, unwilling to waste a second of precious life second-guessing how he should stage his return.

It dawned on him only after he saw the horrified looks on his friends’ faces that he should, perhaps, have washed the dirt and mud off his face, and that paired with his newly soot-stained shirt, crown clutched in one hand, might make for the wrong impression, given that he was so recently dead.

“Holy shit, zombie Quentin!” yelled Josh. “Quick, where’s the crossbow?”

“Uh,” Quentin said, unsure how to prove that he wasn’t a zombie. Monosyllabic grunts, however, were not the correct method, as Julia grabbed a heavy crystal decanter off the bar and hurled it at him, as hard as she could.

It hit him in the forehead, and he stumbled back, falling gracelessly to the floor. He lifted a hand up to touch the gash on his head, and his fingers came away bloody. “Ow.”

“Wait one mother-shitting second, zombies don’t bleed,” Margo said, rising to her feet. “Q?”

“Hi,” he said, waving the bloody hand. “Can I get a towel or something?”

Julia grabbed one and hurried over, pressing it to Quentin’s forehead and babbling, “I’m so sorry, oh my god, I didn’t know it was you.”

“Is it, though? What if he’s from an alternate timeline?” Kady asked, narrowing her eyes at him. 

Quentin said, “Being a detective really made you a skeptic.”

Julia threw her arms around him, leaving him to hold the towel to his forehead. He was pretty sure the bleeding was stopping, which he appreciated. He didn’t want to spend the first hour of his resurrection in the med building.

“Q,” she said into his neck, and Quentin held her tight, eyes squeezed closed, enjoying the feel of Julia’s warm arms wrapped around him, and the strength of her love. 

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, the weight of what he’d done settling on him as a debt he didn’t think he’d ever escape. “I’ll never… I’m so sorry.”

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw, past Julia’s wild brown curls, was Eliot.

Julia loosened her grip on him reluctantly, like she was unwilling to let him go, but did. Eliot stood shock-still in the doorway, a bottle loosely held at his side. Quentin knew him, knew from his bloodshot eyes and wrecked hair that he hadn’t slept, had sat up all night wrapped in his grief and heartache. 

“Q,” he said with a rusty voice.

“I’m back,” Quentin said, because it was the only thing that mattered. 

Alice was there, too -- how had he not seen Alice, who was the last thing he’d seen. “Q, how are you… What happened?”

Quentin was absolutely not telling anyone that he was kicked out of the afterlife because he still had magical cake in his system. “I don’t remember. I was there, and then… I was outside.”

It left a lot of questions, but Quentin wasn’t entirely certain himself what had happened. And it had seemed important to not draw the Old Gods’ attention, so not mentioning them at all was probably for the best.

“You’re you, though?” Alice said. “Not.. like I was?”

Quentin nodded. “I am. At least, I think I am.”

He pulled the towel away from his head, standing up slowly and meeting Eliot’s eyes directly for the first time. 

“Q, you idiot,” Eliot said, stepping forward. Covering the distance between them with a few long strides. Quentin had enough time to give Alice an apologetic look, knowing that there was going to be an awkward conversation soon about how his love for her was still there, just softened into the steadfastness of friendship. Then he was wrapped up in Eliot, fully engulfed in his arms, bodies pressed together tightly, with Eliot whispering things into his neck that he never thought he’d hear. Words of love, of regret, of hope.

Of the future.

Quentin had a future, and it was brighter every second. He cut off Eliot’s desperate stream of words with his mouth, making his own promises the best way he knew how.


End file.
